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Strategies & Market Trends : Options -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Uncle Frank who wrote (6344)	4/12/2000 10:40:00 AM
From: Jill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 8096

Well, folks, I'm going to shut off the computer. Not much I can do today anyway. I'll check back in on bloodflow later. Here's an excerpt of a piece on how important cc's are, as or more important than earnings. Sorry I didn't copy the URL: With earnings season nearly in full swing, attention turns to the post-earnings conference calls, which companies hold with analysts and institutional investors to discuss their results. Nothing illustrated the importance of these calls better than Motorola (MOT), which reported a solid first quarter Monday night. Motorola then forecast a disappointing second quarter in its Tuesday morning conference call (simulcast on the Web via CCBN.com), sending Motorola's stock down 18 percent. Fortunately, companies are getting better about providing access to these calls to regular Joe shareholders who aren't analysts or fund managers, according to Mark Coker, founder and CEO of BestCalls.com, which provides a guide to investor conference calls. BestCalls.com not only posts a schedule of conference calls, but also provides links to sites where the call is being webcast (such as Investor Broadcast Network). "A year ago, over 75 percent of the companies that held conference calls excluded individual investors. Today, we estimate that 60 to 70 percent of companies allow some individual investor access to the calls," Coker tells UpsideToday. "In the next two quarters, we're going to see that number rise above 85 percent." One major catalyst has been the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has proposed a rule forbidding "selective disclosure" of information during these calls. This has sparked more companies to webcast the calls live, or at least offer replays of the calls online; some companies even allow investors to participate by phone in listen-only mode. Investors are clearly interested in these calls, as BestCalls.com now has almost 62,000 people who registered for free "membership." The most popular upcoming call on BestCalls.com is America Online (AOL), for which more than 9,500 members requested information. Says Coker, "These calls are becoming events."